Watch Lunar Eclipse...or Wait Another 400 Years

Lunar eclipse falls on the winter solstice for the first time since 1638

In this handout photo provided by NASA, A total lunar eclipse is seen as the full moon is shadowed by the Earth on the arrival of the winter solstice, on December 21, 2010 in Arlington, Virginia.
(Bill Ingalls/NASA/Getty)

For the first time in over four hundred years, a lunar eclipse lands on the winter solstice. On the morning after this auspicious coincidence, we catch up with some professional star gazers to get a sense of the event’s astronomic and historical significance. We speak with Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium and host of NOVA's "Science Now," along with Cameron Hummel, a PhD Student at Columbia University’s Department of Astronomy.

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Most of the time the moon misses Earth's shadow in space and the shadow is always out there; its just no reason, no occasion to recognize it, or to identify it until something that's lit up moves into it.

This combo of pictures taken in Manassas, Va. shows the moon in different stages of a total lunar eclipse on December, 21, 2010. During the eclipse, the Earth will align between the full moon and the sun, covering the lunar surface in shadow. The eclipse is also falling on the same day as the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere—a rare occurrence that hasn't happened in 372 years.

Top news 2010----US is declared an Idiocracy after rejecting Democracy and Evolution. No longer will the US experience lunar eclipses - these events will now be interpreted Acts of God forewarning doom and gloom because of womens lib, gay soldiers and other issues offensive to the 70% majority who reject evolution.